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Today is a bonanza of new @UAS_CESR research on the impacts of COVID-19 on families' educational experiences.
First, we have new research out at @BrookingsEd that looks at parent concerns and school grades during the pandemic. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/11/18/surveys-show-things-are-better-for-students-than-they-were-in-the-spring-or-do-they/
Our work started from this little table, which reports parents' grades for schools pre-COVID, in the spring, and in the fall (October) on the usual 0-4 GPA scale
The first read of these data is that schools are doing a lot better now than they were in the spring! That's a great thing and got us excited. But then we dug in and split these data by mode of participation (in person/hybrid/online)...
And that's where things go south. It turns out that improvements in parents' ratings of their kids' educational experiences are driven to a very large extent by parents whose kids are IN PERSON.
In short, if you're back in person, things are not quite where they were pre-COVID but pretty close. If you're remote or hybrid, things are just barely better than they were in the spring after COVID closures.
We saw the same thing with regard to parents' concerns for their kids (emotional, social, etc.). Concerns have declined quite a bit in some cases for parents whose kids are back in school.
But if you're remote, either your concerns haven't declined as much (quality of education) or your concerns have actually gotten worse (social, emotional).
What do I take away from this? Once the current wave calms down, *we have to do everything we can to figure out how to get as many kids back in school as possible.*
Of course, that's not going to be easy for all the reasons I discussed last week @hechingerreport, but It. Must. Be. A. Policy. Priority. Close the damn restaurants and bars. https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-the-truth-about-returning-to-school-theres-no-easy-answer/
We also have a new @UAS_CESR report out at @CRPE_UW's Evidence Project (PDF): https://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/matching_supports_to_student_needs_ep.pdf
This report focuses specifically on remote learners. Who are they? What are they getting? What do they need? First, we find *huge* demographic differences in who is learning remotely:
White families, rural families, and Republican families are far less likely to be learning remotely than families of color, urban families, and Democratic families.
Next, we asked parents about technology and internet access. On the one hand, we find technology problems from the spring have mostly been solved. But we still find important income gaps in the need to share computers and in the quality of internet bandwidth.
We also asked parents about tutoring, finding that only about 40% of families who need tutoring are getting it. About a quarter of parents report their districts are providing some tutoring.
And we find that parents mostly say they're equipped to support their students' schoolwork. But again there are gaps here, with more educated parents much more confident in their abilities to support their children.
From this piece, we take away that 1) we need to keep pushing on technology to ensure families have access to adequate devices and internet, 2) we need to support tutoring or other programs for kids who need them, and 3) We need to find ways to support parents to help their kids.
